Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films(Chicago Review Press)
interview with Author Joseph Lanza
Ken Russell's cinematic work and style is so unusual that he usually gets compared to an artist such as Bosch or a writer such as HP Lovecraft rather than any particular film artist (Although he and Nic Roeg seem to get lumped together a lot-Roeg might be David to Russell's Bosch)-The first full-legnth biography of the one time enfant terrible of British Cinema has just been written by Joseph Lanza (who also wrote a biography of Nicolas Roeg and Elevator Music: A Sureal History of Muzak). Mr. Lanza was nice enough to conduct an email interview with FSW about Russell and his work.
MR: You seem to have a special insight and appreciation into the work and "vision" of Ken Russell. How do you account for this and did you suspect you might have a special affinity for him before you began this book?
JL: "I have had an affinity for much of Ken Russell’s work for decades. In the seventies, I had enjoyed The Music Lovers and especially The Devils, but oddly, the film that got me really thinking about Russell was Valentino. Though under-rated, even among its own director at times, Valentino (at least most of it) shows top-notch directing, with staccato dialogue and the kind of overblown acting I associate with the sixties television series Batman. And amid this camp and gaudy glamour, Russell had the courage to put in a scene where Rudolph Valentino is symbolically raped in a prison – it’s the point in the film that veers into true horror. The producers wanted to scissor the scene out, but Russell fought and won to keep it in. This made me realize Russell’s uncompromising style and vision."
MR: Russell seemed to have a real interest in casting interesting performers, but not necessarily polished actors in fairly high profile parts (Nureyev in Valentino for example). Was this something he did deliberately or was it simply a component of his unorthodox outlook?
JL: "I think he had to do it deliberately. He has sometimes lamented Nureyev’s bad acting, but it is no worse than that of the film’s other actors. The exaggerated acting was intentional. Russell must have wanted that alienation effect, so that you see Valentino as more of a cipher – a projection of other people’s sexual hang-ups and power games. I look at Valentino especially as a movie in the Ben Hecht style, particularly Hecht’s Specter of the Rose. That too was about the misguided and often-psychopathic worship of “art.” Everyone’s overacting and coming across as miscast, but that’s all the more fitting for themes about hambones aspiring to be idols of the stage and screen. Russell is best when he works in that heightened reality. I commend that lack of “polish” that makes his best movie moments as clumsy yet as inspiring as an Isadora Duncan dance. Few directors are that brave."
MR: Films like Tommy, Valentino, Lair of the White Worm and Altered States got a lot of press upon their initial theatrical release. Do you feel like these films, and Russell's films in general, have held up well?
JL: "Lousy dialogue and a gauche happy ending hamper Altered States. But Tommy looks intriguing, especially in the way that it had set the trend for the MTV-style video. There have been pop video precursors, such as Scopitones, but Russell, as far back as his parody of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” in The Music Lovers, helped to inspire MTV’s more cinematic entries. And I think Valentino holds up quite well. It certainly has a seventies feeling to it (Art Nouveau enjoyed a revival back then), but I think it could find a new, appreciative audience today that would get the irony."
MR: Do you see Russell's influence in any films and/or filmmakers at present?
JL: "There are smatterings of Russell’s style here and there, but there’s not enough of a conscious homage to his influence. The best I’ve seen is the 2006 film Brothers of the Head. The directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe not only pay tribute to Russell’s impressionist documentary style; they also include Russell himself commenting on the movie’s imaginary film-within-a-film. I wish they’d included more footage that shows up on the DVD extras, with Russell giving his ideas about how subjective truth is often truer than “the facts.” He would have made a grand contrast to the character in the film who plays the self-righteous “cinema verite” director -- the one who rambles on and on about being “real,” yet seems so phony.
MR: Whose idea was it to title the book Phallic Frenzy?
JL "I am happy and proud to say that I thought up that title. My publisher also let me choose the cover image. That probably doesn’t happen often."
See more about he book at
www.ipgbook.com
or
www.chicagoreviewpress.com
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